POV Golf club

We’ve had several POV projects, the bike, the pendant… but [max] over at zedomax knows how to use the tip line – and I do swing a club now and then. This time the POV device is attached to a golf club. They call it a training device, and I’d have to agree, as it could be a good way to get your swing into a proper rhythm. [I *know* ladyada has plenty of POV boards if you want one that’s easy to build.]

that micro is overkill for such a simple task, ive built one of these with 17 verticle pixles, using only a PIC16F690, which is around one tenth the price (and smaller) check this out (this isn’t mine) http://www.luberth.com/rus0.jpg

#5: yeah, it is kind of overkill, but so is a pic microcontroller. back in the day, they’d make these using only an oscillator, counter, and eprom. anyway, the controller runs basic language and it took me about 5 minutes to write the code, most of it was drawing a character set by eyeballing binary numbers. i also like to use cheap microcontrollers for a completed design that won’t be changed often, but for roughing out an idea in minutes nothing beats the ease of a controller like cubloc or basic stamp. to blink an led in assembly language on a new microcontroller requires an hour just to figure out where all the registers are you need to set up. i’ve done it, i’ve implemented usb devices from scratch using assembly and with no examples to base it on…i can do it if i have to. but with this thing, to blink an led on I/O 5 you go “low 5; do; reverse 5; delay 100; loop” and you’re done. then you’ve got all kind of canned routines like lcd, serial, and i2c interfaces, useful to work on a concept, then you can go back and take the time to put a dedicated circuit together if you decide you need it. i think everybody who hacks gadgets should have something like this kicking around.

#7: if you want to get some level of ease of programming for PIC controllers check out the MIOS midibox OS at http://www.midibox.org – it takes away most of the pain and allows you to use C while it does most of the messy PIC register work in optimized ASM routines..